Reckless
by Akirelee
Summary: "Reckless" is what he had called her. A Sessh/Rin romance full of angst, violence, sex and a slew of other adult themes. Reader be warned!
1. Reckless

A/N: This story is a complete re-upload of the original. One day, the FF gods decided to do away with the ability to create page breaks using "-" and thusly my story was ruined. I'm lazy, and never felt like fixing it. Today I've handled that situation by introducing "…" as a definitive page break and I've also loaded a new chapter for your viewing pleasure. I combined the original Chapters 1 and 2,as well, so you know. I will be leaving most of the old Author's Notes up as they were relevant at the time of the original posting. Happy reading.

Old A/N: **I don't own Inu Yasha**. A little background on this story: I'm in the midst of writing another Sessh/Rin Fic as we speak, but I had two different ideas that were similar but just did not coincide with each other. I didn't want to torture poor Rin too much, because I hate stories like that, so I simply had to split them. If you read both stories, (the other is titled "A Proper Place to Die," and can be found by copying and pasting this into your browser .net/s/5897214/1/A_Proper_Place_To_Die) you will see similarities. But they are definitely two different stories that are written in different-ish ways. I will work on both stories and hopefully you will see updates quickly. I am actually deployed right now and have NOOOO desire to be writing fics at all! I have my own original story that I'm working on, but I am caught up in all this Sessh/Rin romance and just can't help myself! That being said, I only have so much time to work on everything, and I kinda have to make some tough decisions sometimes.

Hope you enjoy the story, and once again, for those who haven't read my other fic, you will _totes_ see little to no Japanese intermixed in anything that I write. It is one of my pet peeves; I'm like pick an effing language! If you would, however, like a Japanese version of this story, please feel free to ask and I will consider it. *smiles*

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_Reckless_ is what he had called her.

The only word that he spoke as he strode past her.

He unsheathed his sword, the Bakusaiga, and shoved it into the stomach of the disgusting man who's filthy hand was upon her shoulder. The man hadn't even the time to register just who his murderer was before the life in his eyes died. His grip on her shoulder tightened, just for a moment, and then Sesshomaru wrenched his sword out of him; the man's guts spewed forth and then disintegrated. The damage traveled upward; his hands crumbled and became dust, his face cracked and then erupted, and what was soon left of him was merely a pile of sweaty clothes and sandals.

She did not move. "What are you doing here?" She asked emotionlessly, her lips barely parted. Her face set. She had not followed him with her eyes, to where his long legs continued to carry him, just as far away from her as he had always been.

He did not reply.

She was certain he had continued onward.

She had been sitting upon the florid earth in a forest between two neighboring towns; her back against a tree that was otherwise dying if not for only three golden leaves at the tip of its highest branch. It was night time, and in no way was it safe for an unaccompanied human female to wander the darkness alone. She hadn't cared; she did not care, anymore, where her feet took her and where she made her rest.

But sure enough, a male villager had found his way to her. She didn't attempt to fight him as he touched her face, speaking slurred words to her through drunken lips, his flask of saké posted faithfully on his hip.

Plunging his slimy tongue into her mouth, he had kissed her. And when she didn't respond he slapped her. Her head snapped forcefully to the side, she felt the sting of his finger tips only distantly, and then he grabbed her by the hair and demanded she respect him; his foul, acrid breath seeping into her nose and bits of spit flecking her. Her continued silence seemed to make him even more irate. He grabbed hold of his saké and took a long drink, then splashed some in her face.

She remembered closing her eyes then, with no intention of reopening them, when she heard rustling fabric, felt him grab the back of her head, and gagged as he shoved himself into her mouth; saké still dripping from her wet face, falling drop by drop to stain her tattered purple kosode.

It was only then that Sesshomaru had appeared, and for the first time in years she felt her heart beat in her chest. A solid thump so sudden that she wasn't sure exactly just what had transpired, and in the first seconds of her observing him the man before her had become only a memory.

Rin exhaled and leaned forward, digging the man's drink out of the folds of his clothes. She pressed it to her lips, feeling the familiar burn as it entered her throat, spreading welcomed numbness from there on downward.

She was dying. Sickness plagued her insides like thunder in the heavens, and there was no herb or magic capable of curing her. She was going to die. And for a girl who had grown accustomed to losing everything at a very young age, it had not taken her long to come to a resolution.

_She would not lose at this_.

She would beat death to it.

Rin took another sip of saké and leaned her head back against her tree, eyes closed.

She _was _reckless.

_Unfeeling_.

A monster she had allowed herself to become.

She had torn herself away from her friends, the life she knew, on the day she made her fifteenth year, the day she awoke ill and Kaede had been unable to create neither a salve nor serum to heal her; determined that she would not lose anything else to just one more thing she could not control.

Sesshomaru's face popped into Rin's mind, "_reckless_," he had called her; had spoken only that word to her. She had not seen him in years. She had run from everything, including him, her first friend, and the last person she ever allowed to abandon her first.

"…_person_." She mumbled under her breath, in the process of downing the longest sip of saké yet when the flask was knocked out of her hands. She snapped her eyes open. Sesshomaru was standing above her, lowering his foot back to the forest floor, his amber eyes gleaming in the light of the waxing crescent moon.

"I did not save you, for you to kill yourself." He said flatly, and she stared up at him. After all these years she could still not help but be impressed by him, in much the same way she had been when she was but a small child under his care. How tall he was, even now, compared to her. His calmness. His absolute fearlessness. How he was so much unlike herself, or how she had been, not so very long ago.

She placed a hand to her cheek, remembering the time he once touched her there. "I've never asked you to save me, Lord Sesshomaru. In fact, the only thing I've ever asked you to do, you did _not _do." She said, finding her feet drunkenly and standing. She did not come to his shoulder. "_Why are you here_?" She asked once more, peering up at him, her black hair fluttering into her face wildly, leaving her dead eyes in shadow.

Sesshomaru used the long fingers of a sharply nailed hand to shove the hair away, staring into Rin's eyes as if trying to find something that wasn't there. She did not move, but snapped her eyes shut stubbornly.

"Then do as you wish. I will not interfere again." And with that he dropped her face and turned his back upon her, walking away; long strides that would once again take him out of her life.

"Sesshomaru! Wait!" She shouted suddenly, sloppily walking the new distance between them. He stopped, granting her only his profile in recognition of her request. She could see but a single side of his cheek, the outline of his thin lips, one half of the markings upon his stoic face that told the story of his royal demon lineage.

"You didn't wait for me years ago…why now?" She asked. And before he could turn away and continue onward she placed her numb fingers upon the cloth of his obi and pressed herself into his arms. And before he could deny her, she kissed him.

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It was she who had received his curse. He knew that now.

Regardless of all the time he spent ignoring the truth. He observed it in her eyes. And it angered him. For if only she would put the foolish notion out of her mind she would live.

_She could not love him. _

_He would not let her. _

Sesshomaru wrenched his mouth away from Rin's, but for a moment he allowed her to linger in his grasp as all manner of silently infectious thoughts contorted themselves throughout his mind.

_Why_.

Why had it been her, the human of all else?

Punished for thoughtlessly loving him, by the curse of a demon whom he had killed centuries before she was even born.

"Death be unto you, unloved and alone, spread forth from the one thing that should cause life. Spare me now, great dog demon, and my curse will not be dealt your hand. But kill me, and all that is of you will rot from the inside."

Sesshomaru remembered the enchantment. Remembered the slight smile he gave as he rendered the demon lifeless, tearing its bear-like head from the man's body it rested on. Remembered how stupid it had been for the demon to think he would ever care about love.

Maybe that was why his hands remained around Rin now, holding her lightly at the waist, because he felt the slightest bit of guilt that her life had been in his hands from before the day it had even formed, and he had sacrificed it then, without concern for the girl it would later destroy.

_She could not love him._

_He would not let her. _

Then again, whatever foolish way in which she chose to waste her time was of no consequence. She would die regardless; drinking herself to death. She had already died now; allowing all manner of things to occur upon her with no resistance in her feeble human heart.

Did he care? At any rate? Just how it happened?

Did he care that he had saved her life, years ago, just for her to die anyway? And because of him?

Sesshomaru set her away from himself; his face unrevealing of any of his inner thoughts, his eyes a gleam of sharp, cunning amber. Neither of them spoke. Standing apart from one another as the wind blew so that Sesshomaru's sleek silver hair fanned out in front of him, and Rin's wafted gently behind her; their clothing whipping around them audibly in the same breeze that tore those remaining three golden leaves up above their heads from the branch in which they hung.

The leaves wafted to the ground, settling between their feet, and then they both began walking, a slight sway in Rin's drunken step.

And for a moment they were just as they had been once upon a time.

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"I am going to the village of my birth, Lord Sesshomaru." Said Rin, quite undisturbed by all that had just transpired. Her cheeks were flushed, the sway of her walk sloppy, yet somehow graceful, well placed. She removed a silver flask from the pocket of her kosode and took a long sip of rice wine, still carefully stepping over rock and fallen tree branch. "I am going to die the way I should have seven years ago."

The left corner of her mouth tilted upward crookedly, the remains of a dimple only slightly visible upon her sallow cheek. She had grown into an attractive young woman, and now was only a sickly shell of that former self. Still, beauty emanated from her. From her long thin limbs and up to her wild hair, past apple red lips and large brown eyes burdened by sorrow.

No man had come across her path without looking into those eyes and extending her their help, their service, hoping to aid her, assist her in some way so that she would curve her lips into a smile and those sad brown eyes would achieve some form of light. But they couldn't see, didn't know, that what she needed saving from was herself.

"You are a fool." Said Sesshomaru after a mile spent in complete silence except for the rustling of leaves and Rin's own solid breaths, accompanied by the occasional swish of wine down her throat.

"Lord Sesshomaru," replied Rin, raising thin fingers to her neck and tracing several old scars along the nape of it, the teeth marks of wolves. There was no inflection in her simple voice as she continued, "you interfered with my death seven years ago. It did not leave you unchanged."

At this Sesshomaru looked sideways at her, his amber eyes sharply upon hers.

"Because you took me from Death, Death took something from you. You can never be the same, Lord Sesshomaru, unless fate is reset. Accompany me on my journey, make sure I reach my destination, and you can have just what it is that you desire, to be exactly as you once were."


	2. Apathetic

A/N: Did I say I was going to update the other story? I'm bad. What I meant was that I would stare blankly at the other story and write a few lines, but certainly not enough to publish. Haha. I did work on it today, and I may work on it some more tonight but let me not guarantee that I will post more of it too soon, it's coming upon the close and I want to make sure it ends right. But back to this story, hope you enjoy the chapter and please R&R. I'm not going to promise you that you will feel like this chapter really accomplished anything special, but I'm pretty sure the next chapter will. But before I can get to all the fun that will one day ensue with this story, I gotta create some structure first. Kthxbye!

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It had been two moons ago now, since Sesshomaru silently accepted Rin's request, his face an un-telling mask of wildly twirling thoughts as he dissected all she said, fitting it to everything that occurred since long before she was unfortunate enough to stumble across his path.

The yellow sun now shined brightly in the sky of the place where they made their first stop; the mouth of a cave forged into the side of a jagged mountain's sloping tip, overlooking a grouping of small human settlements. It was there that Rin had gone to acquire nourishment while Sesshomaru sat upon the cave's dirty floor; his armor removed so that only his white blouse remained to cover his pale chests, his head bowed in what any unwise onlooker would wrongly believe to be sleep.

"…_Spare me now, great dog demon, and my curse will not be dealt your hand. But kill me, and all that is of you will rot from the inside_."

He had destroyed the Gateway King a century ago; it being the demon that reserved the power to open the door between this world and the dead-land in which the bones of his father were harbored. All a part of his plight to obtain a sword he no longer had any concern for.

He had not hesitated, on that day, to perform the action that would lead him to the very place in which he resided today, awaiting the return of a girl whose painful death he was helping her recommit.

The foolish human girl who was dying because of a curse he had embraced…would he have hesitated if he had known then, the future outcome of his actions?

_No_.

These questions, these curiosities, only formed themselves in his mind because she had been correct. On the day he saved her life, something inside of him changed; linking him to her in a way he had never satisfactorily been able to explain.

Her life had, in a way, given him the use of both swords he now carried with him, it gave him something to protect; and now her unavoidable death would give him full usage of them as the all-powerful being he once was. In death she would serve her last and only purpose to him; he would feel no remorse as he watched her torn apart by sharp teeth and vicious claws and Death at last released to him the part of him it stole, he would no longer even be capable of doing so.

He remembered the day he first met the young, at the time mute, human girl. His back against a tree as he lay in the forest badly injured from the Wind-Scar of the mutt hanyou, quite as she had been two days ago when they crossed paths once more, except there had been no man nor beast foolish enough to disturb his rest but her.

He would have slain her instantly, a quick, easy death. But he smelled no reason for alarm in her youthful scent, and already weakened from his injuries, he saw no point in drawing his sword once more, content to instead ignore the human creature. Had she already begun to love him then? As she forged the ridiculous notion in her head that he was somehow a friend to her, simply because he of no one else hadn't lashed out at her…?

Days later, he smelled her blood on the air, and upon seeing her small, mauled face covered in dirt and wetness with what were perhaps her tears, he decided to revive her. Not out of kindness. Kindness would have been to allow her sleep forevermore with no more fear of harm in this cruel world her kind had created for her. But out of curiosity; to test his father's final gift to him.

_It was useless_.

His father's gift was useless. To what end had the Great Dog Demon imagined there would be anything in Sesshomaru's life that he would need to, or for that matter _want_ to, revive once it had passed on? It figured that the pitiful demon who found himself a human mate would want a way to revive it once its life span came upon its quick, inevitable end.

He allowed Rin to follow him from that point onward, if only so that his saving the pointless life of a human girl meant he had not merely wasted his time as she died yet again, unable to fend for herself with no other humans to care for her. It was this guise that allowed him to protect and save the girl on several more occasions without feeling the need to question his own motives. He easily accepted that the girl was not his ward because of concern nor compassion for her life, but because he would ensure she lived long enough to appreciate his gift.

But that answer had not been enough to sustain that concept once more, two moons ago, when he interfered with her life after years of having been separated from her; stabbing a sword which he had used to sleigh great and powerful demons into the flesh of a human who was not even worth his effort, and not even to save the girl from death, but from being improperly handled.

If her death meant he would never be compelled to behave in such a way again, he saw it as a worthy cause.

Her scent wafted over to him. He heard a huff of air escape through her mouth as she grunted quietly, shuffling her way back into the cave, momentarily blocking the sunlight as she appeared in the mouth of it. A cloth sack was slung over her shoulder and a handle of ale was tucked under a slender arm. She dropped her findings onto the stone floor between them, the sack unfurled and an assortment of bread and fruit was revealed.

She drunkenly collapsed in front of it, her legs splayed beneath her in a way that would seem unnatural and uncomfortable if she had been properly sober. After a palm-full of seedy, dusty grapes and several large sips of ale she looked up at him, a new flush in her cheeks, her breathing retaining the common unevenness of one who had taken in too much drink too quickly.

"Aren't you going to eat?" She asked. He lifted his eyes away from his lap for the first time, watching with no small amount of dissatisfaction as her crooked smirk returned, that singular dimple indenting itself upon the apple of her pink cheek. It seemed to only come when she knew what she said would affect him in one unappealing way or another. He did not like it. And so why he adjusted himself to see what he had already known would be there was a mystery to him.

He plucked a grape from the pile using the tips of two long, thin fingers that ended in sharp yellow nails and popped it into his mouth to spite her; he did not eat what human's ate. She was well aware of the fact. Her lopsided smile fell, her lips soon recovered by the ale, a drop of which slid down her neck, crawling over the old scars upon it. That dimple dissolved back into her sickly cheek.

Sesshomaru's slim throat visibly constricted as he swallowed the grape, his angular face now pointed upward so that he could see every line upon the cave's cracked and pockmarked ceiling. He had been unaware, up until the point that he met with Rin once more, that humans changed; that at some point in their short lives they managed to find time to stop being one way and become entirely another. Rin had done so.

He closed his eyes, recalling the time he left her to be in the village where the Bone Eater's Well resided, she had asked him to wait. _He did not_. He kept walking with strides so wide that even as she ran behind him she could not keep up, and soon he had walked out of her life all together. Was that where the old Rin ended and the new Rin began? In the seconds in-between when he was there and when he simply was not?

Sesshomaru exhaled, allowing sleep to come at last.

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Rin raised her knee to her chin, kneeling her head upon it. She had to steal the food she retrieved today, she vaguely recognized the fact that she no longer had any fear of the retribution she'd received as only a small child for doing the exact same thing. With no one to care now just where she would have received her bruises. She looked at Sesshomaru, whose eyes were closed, several strands of sleek silver hair hanging over them.

In death, she would no longer concern herself over the fact that he felt nothing for her, even deep in the pits of his cold, frozen heart. She placed her hand to her own heart, feeling an unfamiliar thump which threatened to destroy every barricade she had created within herself. She pressed the ale back to her lips, drowning the last half of it, but unable to numb the feeling gnawing steadily at her insides. She looked away from his face, turning her eyes sharply downward and forcing them closed, begging sleep to envelope her as well.


	3. Foolish

A/Ns: Ummm, Akirelee doesn't know how she feels about this chapter. I kind of don't want to post it. But I kind of should. I wanted to update before now but the internet here can suck sometimes. I'd like to post this before it flakes out again, I'd also like to hold onto this chapter until I'm sure it's exactly what I want to do. But I guess I can post it and if I decide I want to change some things I can always edit it and repost, I really feel as if I can and should flesh it out some more.

I'm still working on the last bit of A Proper Place to Die. I'm also trying to avoid starting this new Sessh/Rin story, but in case I fail be looking out for another fic from me as well. Please forgive any spelling errors. I doubt there will be many, but you know I don't have a beta and we all make mistakes

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He watched her open her eyes, raising her head from where it had been pressed into her knees with her hair wildly covering her face. The moon had regained the sky, slightly occluded by dark clouds that promised rain. Her face was wet. She had been crying in her sleep.

She leaned onto her side, hitting the stone of the cave floor with a soft thump, and then began to crawl toward the opening, where the black night sky blew fresh air and leaves upon them. He heard her retch, she was vomiting; one hand pressed against the cave's solid wall and her other arm dangling out of it as she balanced herself upon her knees. He could see the toes of her shoeless feet curl with each violent spasm that overtook her.

He looked away.

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''Lord Sesshomaru," she said, watching her feet carefully as she walked, placing each step heel-to-toe along a straight line it appeared only she could see. "Have you ever wondered why I followed you all those years ago?" She asked. The flaps of her purple kosode billowed in a light wind; she placed her palms to them, holding them closed with a shiver.

Sesshomaru did not respond, but she continued talking, un-erred, much as she had as a child, "…I'm certain you've always assumed it to be because I had nowhere else to go, when really it was because—" Rin stopped speaking suddenly, closing her eyes. Sesshomaru glanced sideways at her, she pursed her lips and fell to her knees, two singular tears sprouting from either brown eye.

The first drop of rain at last fell from the sky, repelled by the cloth of his demonic garb. By the time the second drop came to land upon her cheek he was carrying her; having gathered the small lump of pitiful human flesh curled into a ball at his feet into his arms and pressing on for hours more; silently hauling her to the place where she would die; her heart beating softly against the place in his chests where his rested.

He frowned. Feeling the rhythm they created, as if they were responding to one another. Each step he took closer to their destination caused the beating organ to thump one more sharp tick against his breastplate; he did not understand it, did not comprehend what message his bleeding heart could ever want to convey to a human girl.

Sesshomaru set Rin's motionless body at the slick, wet base of a large rock, but he continued onward still, tearing himself a way from her. He placed a hand to his chests, feeling the exact spot where her heart last beat upon him with a wince because his own heart somehow seemed less efficient now.

He reached a river and knelt before it, bringing cool water to his lips and drinking. He stayed there for a long time, the rain increasing to hammer down a much steadier thrum. Un-wet and unconcerned with the weather he did not move from the spot, but sat upon the gnarled bed of rocks that formed the river's border as the moon shined above him and his insides ignited.

He closed his eyes. Inhaled deeply. Tried to steady the restlessness his heart had acquired the moment hers was pressed so near it, tried to place the empty feeling he had now that it was so far away.

_Was this what it was like to feel regret…?_

He snapped his eyes open, Rin was awake.

She had come to sit beside him, raising a bare knee and placing her chin upon it. Her hair and garments were soaked through. Sesshomaru turned his sharp, amber eyes upon her. She held out her open hand and closed it onto several rain drops.

"I don't feel it." She said solemnly, as if he had asked a question. "I don't feel much of anything anymore."

She removed her flask from her pocket and prepared to take a drink, but before the shining metal could reach her lips Sesshomaru peeled his hand away from his chest and used that free arm to grab her, pressing her to him as she had been before, attempting to satiate the fire that had burst within him.

He pried her fingers away from the flask, throwing it onto the ground at his side, unsure of everything but this: _he did not want her to be unable to feel him_.

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Rin's eyes flew open; for a few seconds all thoughts were wiped from her mind as she laid her wet head upon Sesshomaru's shoulder. His arms were around her, he was coddling her as if she were a small child, or perhaps, more accurately, a doll of some sort.

There was nothing loving in his touch, nothing tender; nothing to suggest that he had ever held anyone or anything in such a way. She could tell that her being in his arms felt awkward to him, foreign. He did not know what to do with his hands. She felt one upon her shoulder and the other along her waist, but neither clasped down upon her…he wanted to hold her, _without _holding her.

She heard him inhale, felt the coolness upon her neck from the sudden withdrawal of air there. She wondered just what he was thinking as at last she regained her self, her mind; as she realized this was the first time she had legitimately felt anything in years, and knew that she wanted to feel more.

She blinked her large brown eyes, and in that second that they were closed she wondered about the advisability of testing her barricades now, when she was so close to the end. Would every year she spent storing her feelings into the darkest recesses of her mind be wasted if she allowed herself this one simple moment?

_Well, she was reckless, after all_.

Rin put her arms around Sesshomaru. And everything came tumbling down.

She felt him retract around her, felt him try to slip away from the moment. Her heart skipped a beat and he let out a sudden, quiet gasp of air.

"Don't let go of me." She whispered into his ear.

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He felt her heart churning in her chests.

Her body was cold, her forehead was feverish. He could feel heat emanating from it.

Her breath upon his neck tickled, without saying anything more she placed a kiss upon it. Sesshomaru felt tingling numbness extend from the place where her hot lips met his skin. He frowned, feeling his hands contract around her of their own accord.

He wanted her away from him, to be put out of his mind as all other simple humans were. But his body wanted more of her, more of her to quench the thirst that had begun to grow inside of him; weaving through his bowels like a snake so that his stomach ached for her, pumping through his ventricles so that his heart beat for her, searing his lips so that they yearned for her.

Everything about her had become pain to him, yet in those moments Sesshomaru lived to suffer. To endure through the agony of ire and revulsion that welled up inside of him at the mere thought of all that he was feeling, and all that he had felt; all that he had done, _and all that he was about to do_.

He lowered his head and kissed her collar bone, and then, after a pause where he fought with every fiber of his demonic being not to, he rolled her off of him and onto her back, and now upon his side he placed his lips to the spot in her chest where her heart laid and kissed it as well.


	4. Selfish

A/Ns: I'd like to remind the readers that this story is rated MA for a reason. Don't forget to go back and re-read the last two sections of the last chapter if you never did. I _did_ add more to it. So, off you go! Hope you enjoy.

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_He realized only too late that having more of her only made him want _evenmore_ of her in turn._

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Rin shoved an elbow beneath her, propping herself up. She brought her free hand forward, hesitated, then placed it upon Sesshomaru's shoulder, gathering the white fabric of his garb and bundling it into her wet fist.

He looked at her; there was no emotion in his eyes that she could discern, but a mixture of many that did not coincide. If there was desire in them, there was also anger. If there was worry, _as if his eyes could ever portray such a thing_, then there was also lust.

_If there was nothing, then there was everything. _

One emotion of all became quite clear as he reached his hand to hers upon his shoulder and pressed it back to the dirt at her side, but did not let go of it; the paleness of his hand contrasting with the sour shade of her sickly wrist and the rock and mud beneath both.

_Dissatisfaction. _

Whether with himself or her she was uncertain, but he watched the progress of his own hand with a clear gleam of it in his eyes; and then he flicked them back to her. The meaning was definite: she was not to touch him.

He watched her, scrutinized her as he slowly undid her kosode using the quick, precise gestures of his other hand.

She blushed, her breasts exposed, cold rain still falling upon her unsheltered skin. It seemed he was internally making quick decisions. His cold eyes waivered upon her for a moment, and then he placed the hand upon her stomach and traced it up until she was certain his fingers could feel the troubled pulse of her heart.

He retracted those fingers then, forming his hand into a tightly clenched fist upon her breastbone. She saw another quick decision flit across his countenance; his thin lips twisted into a deeper frown, his eyes shuttered to half-closed sickles.

He lowered his face to hers, and Rin felt no more rain as their lips met; his head and hair shielding her from the storm. Like a nacreous tent his silver mane fell around her face on either side, meshing with her black hair upon the ground like a spiraling pool of glossy silk ribbons.

It was ice and fire, somehow simultaneously. His lips were frost, but they set her lips alight, sending jolts through her that crawled over every unhealed wound she retained, whether internally or upon her yellow skin, so that she could feel the bite marks upon her neck as if they were freshly formed.

She let out a sharp hiss and tore her mouth away from his so that his lips ended up resting against the ashen pocket of her cheek.

He was re-instilling within her everything she had wrecked herself to destroy. Every hurt she had worked so hard to escape. Every ache she had dulled with spirits and her own viciously insidious devices. And with that it occurred to her in much a new way that once she died there'd be nothing left of her in him, he'd be restored to the demon he was always meant to be, and she'd be dust in dirt and sand.

Now of all times this registered to her as a miserably grim thought. In all her years of life she'd never been able to enjoy hope on a clear and cloudless day, and in a few short days, she never would. _And he'd have no remorse over her memory. _

Instinctively, her tarnished half smile returned. But it wasn't as it had been only a short while ago, misshaped and malformed by the hard shell she had cast within herself, so that it never reached her eyes and never touched her withering heart. Neither was it as it once was long ago, a glowing expression of the emotions which poured from her as easily as rain flooded the sea.

This smile was some misleading amalgamation of the two that tried to grasp onto all that was safe behind her personal wards; behind every true emotion that it regularly contained, sealed within her red lips and dying behind her brown eyes. But it could not manage the same deceptive control she had previously entrusted it with. It betrayed her. Showed something more of her than she had even remembered remained buried in the pits of her painfully rotting soul.

_That this wasn't what she wanted_. And more over, she didn't ever want to accept back into her heart and mind that it _wasn't. _

She did not _want_ to die. But she was marching to her inevitable death. She had no use nor room for any harmful bond that would once again try to retie the strings of her being back to this world, strings which she had viciously severed with what had felt to her like a dull knife.

And here, now Sesshomaru was. Forcing her to forget how far she had come, how hard she had worked, everything of herself that she had sacrificed just to get to the point where she no longer pined for this mortal world, _or him within it. _

Her common dimple fleshed itself out against her cheek, "_you're so selfish_." She whispered. And he paused, his body becoming motionless, his lips still resting against her cheek.

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The dimple upon her cheek had returned to menace him, leering at him from the place where her true smile had once been. Compulsively he kissed it away. Despising its mere existence and every ill mannered meaning it had to him.

Finally, with no more resolve in his cold heart to forbid himself any longer from taking what his entire body craved, he slipped out of his armor, his blouse, his boots, his hakama.

His Tenseiga and Bakusaiga were set on the ground next to the discarded flask. His hair was finally absorbing the rain's moisture.

_Selfish…_

_Selfish… _

He looked into her eyes, which told more than they ever had, certainly revealed more than they had in the past few days, but he understood nothing in them. Though he knew what she meant regardless.

He was selfish for taking her resolve. For reducing her to the simple human she truly was, the one she was meant to be. _The one he preferred._

But when had she ever come upon the foolish notion that he had ever been anything but that? He was self-serving, had always been so. There was nothing that he wanted, needed, nor merely favored that he did not successfully acquire; often at the expense of others. That was, of course, the reason she was alive today; because he had selfishly returned her to a world which had butchered her purely to test a sword.

Sesshomaru trailed his lips along Rin's cheek, reaching her ear and pressing his face tightly against hers. "_I know_." He whispered quietly, with the first spot of emotion that that had tinged his tone in the entirety of that night as well as many others, and then he maneuvered himself between her slippery legs and slid inside of her.


	5. Struggling

A/N: You know, I've been totally aware for a long time now that the summary for this fic is missing the first quotation mark before "Reckless." It stresses me out to no end, I've attempted to fix it on several occasionS but the update just doesn't stick. Happy reading. This is a shortie, BTW

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Rin uttered a small oath and balled her hands into fists; she could feel dirt gathering beneath her nails. Streaks in the shapes of her fingers were left in the muck of water and rock beneath her. Her open kosode formed the only bit of comfort she felt as her otherwise bare skin sank onto the tips of sharp stones. Mud ran down her legs and across her arms, her face, the length of her torso. The toes of her feet sank into a puddle of soft, disrupted grass.

Still with his long hair creating some sort of pearlescent shield around her, so that all she could see on either side were the shining wet strands of it, she felt him press further inside of her, felt the skin of his abdomen graze upon her, the jutting bones of two hips gliding across her inner thighs. Drops of water dripped from the fringe of hair that lay loose over his face and fell upon her cheek, sliding across like fleeing tears.

There was nothing in his face but stone, nothing more between them than the co-mingling air exhaled from their lungs –so opposite and conflicting that it was almost a visible manifestation of his cold anger and her waning resolve– and the steady quaking beat of either heart, thrumming more fiercely than the rain. His heart begging more from him than he wanted to give; hers more from her than she was _able _to give; sacrificing too many of the scarce few beats it had remaining to it.

She quivered beneath him, stared into his calculating amber eyes as he seemed to test his own boundaries by the second; every action he committed seemed to require a painful, unwanted sacrifice on his behalf.

He withdrew.

"_Lord Sesshomaru…" _She could barely breathe his name, it escaped from her lips involuntarily, a quiet confirmation of longing; she pressed them back together, the color rising in her cheeks.

She could see every muscle and bit of sinew stretched throughout the length of his long white arms; he used both to prop himself up, both to effectively pin her in place.

She wondered if there was anywhere she would have gone.

She closed her eyes, he re-entered her; a quick jolt of sharp, hard pain. Her back arched and she felt her mouth form into the shape of a nearly silent "o."

Her heart sputtered, she blinked. She attempted to steady her flitting emotions.

"_Damned it all_." She finally said, as he retreated once more.

She raised her face to his and without placing her hands upon him, coerced him down into a long, lingering kiss. He fought it not by withdrawing, but by shoving himself back into her. She groaned, but did not relinquish him, her lips pressed so fiercely upon his that they seemed bound by enchantment.

He did not move, he did not adjust, but he _did_ commit to several more angry thrust. And finally, after several jabs that could be more closely associated with insertion by metal rod, -for he was cold, so cold, even there- she snatched her face away from his, a hushed scream escaped her.

She bit down on her lower lip.

Rain raked her forehead.

Strands of his hair wisped across her face, tickling her nose.

He remained firmly inside of her and brought her face back to his with the tips of the long fingers of his left hand. He studied her. She saw his eyes hunt hungrily over her own eyes, her lips, and then he himself went back in for another kiss.

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When they walked now, he could see the Underlings follow her.

Creatures from the other realm which waited upon those who were to soon die; ready and excited for the moment they could take another doomed soul away from the world of the living.

She walked with silent steps that no longer formed or molded the grass and clay beneath her feet, almost as if in assent to her upcoming appointment with death. He carried her most often now, stopping at night to allow her proper rest …_to avoid acknowledging that they only created one set of footsteps now. _

He endured the Underlings then, too, as they crawled over her, upon her face and across her body, unseen by her and only by him due to his Tenseiga.

There would be just one more day's journey now, and they'd have nothing more to wait for. They'd carry her soul away from him forever, he'd return to his former self, and the heart that beat inside of her that seemed to hold some power over his own would die in her chests.

In front of a flickering fire and beneath a sun that had neither completely set, and a moon that had not completely risen, he held her to him now just as he had before, feeling her feeble heartbeat against his. Not for her sake, and certainly not for her comfort, for he cared of neither, only for his.


	6. Changing

A/N: I know what you're thinking. This chapter took a while to form. It turns out, it's been written for a while and I just forgot. I'm sorry. Happy reading, please read and review.

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She walked crookedly, placed her feet lightly, felt as though each step she took might be the one where she crashed to the clay beneath her.

The sun beat down upon her, a blinding force that made her feel violently parched and weary, but that also dried any tear that even considered escaping her before it managed to form.

Circles hung her eyes; she cast them downward, unable to look at the path before her, nor the demon next to her, whose white garments were bright and impossibly painful to look at.

She took a reluctant step and her leg buckled beneath her, Sesshomaru placed a hand under her arm without looking anywhere but forward and steadied her, keeping it there long after she regained her balance.

"Why did you follow me, Rin?" He said after some time. His voice calm and level, detached and seemingly disinterested.

Rin stopped walking abruptly.

Sesshomaru proceeded until the full length of his arm extended, from where he held her by her own arm to several feet forward of the spot. There was no tug from him for her to continue, he did not attempt to move her along but stopped and peered at her in profile, his hair gleaming in the sun; his eyes were somehow null of the brightness it should have caused for them, as if all light was swallowed by them instead of refracting off their golden surface.

_Have you ever wondered why I followed you all those years ago?_

…_I'm certain you've always assumed it to be because I had nowhere else to go, when really it was because…_.

"because _you_ had nowhere else to go." Rin blinked, recalling back to the forefront of her mind the truth behind her words; it came at her with comfortable familiarity.

"I always knew, Lord Sesshomaru, that this was how I would end. I was aware of it every day of the seven years after I first died. Once I experienced the world after this one, where I met The Gateway King."

And she _had_ alwaysknown, somewhere in the pits of her soul, that there was only one path for her; that one singular decision she made in death would one day lead her back again.

Sesshomaru released his hold of Rin and she sank to the ground, her legs splayed brokenly beneath her. She continue speaking, looking up at him even though she faced the sun and could not see him for the glare and the prism like circles it created; occluding him from her view in a fantastic array of colors that resembled the rainbow. "He told me on that day, that you would revive me. That if I ever wanted you to repent your sins so that you could one day be whole, I would have to aid you. And that one day, you'd grow to resent everything I'd done. …I never knew just what he meant, but I knew I had to try. I had to stay with you…I did not want to see damnation cast upon the only being, man or demon, who had ever shown me kindness."

She paused, and they both remained in silence for several moments, until finally she looked down to the ground, thoughtful. "_What did he mean, Lord Sesshomaru? Have I ever done anything for you_?" She asked finally.

Sesshomaru stood with one arm unmoving at his side and the other resting upon the hilt of his Tenseiga, his fist clenched possessively upon it.

"_No_." He finally said after a long moment. And then he knelt swiftly and gathered her.

Pressed against him, with her head on his shoulder and her legs dangling over the side of one strong arm, he started to walk again.

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_The Gateway King. _

He had given Sesshomaru his greatest weapons, simply by sending the human child upon him.

His Tenseiga, his Bakusaiga, both were his because her existence had given him something to protect. And now, ironically, he was delivering her to her death, all to become what he had been without her.

She didn't know, _still, _that her death could be avoided if she shed her piteous affection for him. That he only brought her closer to it by drawing her into him as he had throughout their journey, slowly breaking apart every immunity against him she had built up…_how many more days would she have had if he hadn't touched her, hadn't observed her, hadn't caused her heart to prematurely spend beats it should have been saving….? _

She didn't know that all of this, the entire situation, suited him. That simply because she loved him she'd die and Death would kindly return to him his proper self.

_What a fool the Gateway King had been, to ever think Sesshomaru would care about love_.

He looked down at her. Her chin was tucked in and her scraggly hair was bunched over her face, hiding it from him.

By sundown he entered a dusty, dilapidated cottage with a sunken in roof and only one room. He could still faintly smell her scent here, even though it had been years since she had been in this place. The floor was the same as the dirt outside, and the building itself held no other comfort except for a pot hung over rotted wood and a small bundle of twigs that seemed to be meant to sleep upon.

Sesshomaru led her to it, falling to one knee and laying her upon it.

She stirred.

Her eyes opened.

He realized then that he had been planning on leaving before she awoke.

He looked down at her as she opened her mouth. He could not imagine what words she would speak to him now, _what else there could be to say_?

"Thank you." She said, and he felt his eyes widen in astonishment.

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She had fallen back asleep. Every bone in her body ached, the corners of her lips were torn where her thin skin had begun to wear, her eyes were swollen. She opened them, unaware of how much time had passed since she had come back to this place. She could hear _them_ growling, gathering, forming up, but she remained unable to move, frozen in place by the weakness of her diminishing body.

He was gone. And _she _was buried under his white blouse.

Illogically, she pictured how it would look once her blood stained it. Would it be darker, or perhaps any more vibrant, than the red flower crest upon it? Or would the wolves tear it to shreds as well? She mustered her remaining strength and gathered a handful of it into her fist. She would not so willingly let them have it.

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He could still feel her heart beating, a stray, frantic pulse that lingered inside of him. He walked on, placing a hand to his own heart, remembering the feeling of it. He looked to his side, there were foot prints forming in the clay next to his own, so slightly indented upon the surface they were nearly unnoticeable. Without warning or pretext, and without stopping his trek, Sesshomaru unsheathed Bakusaiga. The moon shined off of its sharp, silver blade. He turned it upon himself suddenly, and in one fluid motion he stabbed it into his chests.

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She coughed, suddenly, violently, and then sat up; Sesshomaru's blouse gathering in her lap.

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Blood seeped from him. He pressed on, staggering a little as the sword through his heart robbed the life from his body. Slowly the world around him shifted; the night became void, the air became death, and he looked to his side to see the form of an enormous demon, materializing out of the still-air.

"You planned this." Said Sesshomaru flatly. He wrenched his sword from his breastbone. There was no more blood, for he was dead.


End file.
